Highway Patrol Officers Deliver Baby in Broken-Down Truck

The California Highway Patrol is being hailed for its rapid response — in delivering a baby.

Officers Tom Nevarez and Chris Webber were responding to a broken-down vehicle Saturday morning in an “extremely rural” portion of Tulare County, between Fresno and Visalia, and west of the Sequoia National Park. The woman was in labor and the truck had broken down on the way to the Kaweah Delta Medical Center in Visalia on Saturday morning, in the intense temperatures of an ongoing summer heat wave.

After the husband called for medical help, the officers moved the woman to the back seat of the truck and assisted in delivering the baby. Less than twenty minutes later, according to Sacramento-based NBC affluence KCRA, they had delivered a healthy baby girl. Paramedics arrived a short time later and transported the mother and baby to the hospital.

The Visalia Times-Delta reported:

California Highway Patrol officer Thomas Nevarez may never have another shift like his Saturday morning patrol. While patrolling the area around Plaza Drive, just north of Visalia, the officer was dispatched to a call of a pregnant woman’s whose SUV had broken down on the way to the hospital. With little training, the officer got a blanket and delivered the baby on the side of the road. Baby Natalia and her mother, Maribel Gonzalez, are both at Kaweah Delta Medical Center in good condition. The father, Jaime Gonzalez, was with them the whole time.

The baby is the Reedly, California couple’s fourth, KCRA reports, and the whole family is doing well.

Officer Nevarez later visited the couple at the hospital and posed with Baby Natalia for photographs.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.